Heel & Key
You step it & grind it
You grind it & step it hard
into the soft leather of your soft shoe.
Dancing by the river’s edge
to coax a small smile from her tilted head—
You fool! laughing, You fool!
Oh, you’ll do it twice for a right grin.
Boot straps & boot slaps.
No one knows you better’n me.
No one knows you better’n me.
This is how you walk it: let the trip guide you to the soft bottom of the river.
This is how you turn it: follow the slap of the leather over to the other shore.
Object
Heel with a Key Hammered into It
Body of Water
About the Artist
KC Trommer’s poems have appeared in AGNI, The Antioch Review, Blackbird, MARGIE, Octopus, Poetry East, The Sycamore Review and other journals. A graduate of the MFA program at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, KC has been the recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize, as well as fellowships from the Center for Book Arts, the New York Public Library, the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Prague Summer Program. She lives in New York City with her husband, the writer Justin Courter, and their son.